Shelby County v. Holder: Three years in, we still need a fix to the Voting Rights Act

Today marks the three-year anniversary of Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court’s strike-down of one of our most important voting rights protections.

Since that day, states across the country have taken advantage of a court-sanctioned free pass to put a variety of repressive voting laws on their books and block thousands of eligible voters from casting ballots.

Texas implemented the nation’s strictest photo ID requirement, accepting hunting licenses but rejecting college student ID cards. With little warning, Arizona’s Maricopa County closed over two-thirds of its polling places for the 2016 presidential primary, leaving thousands of voters standing in line for hours. And North Carolina legislators, just one day after the Supreme Court’s decision, pushed a behemoth bill adding a new photo ID requirement and rolling back reforms with proven records of boosting voter registration and turnout, among them same-day voter registration, early voting, and pre-registration for 16- and 17-year olds.

The moves are bad for voters, who in many areas already face challenges in casting their ballots (note our 36% turnout rate at the last mid-term). Bad for taxpayers, because state litigation is expensive. And bad for democracy, especially when most Americans already feel as though big-dollar special interests trump their voices.

Thanks to these new laws, and other repressive practices in many states, thousands — if not hundreds of thousands — of Americans have had their voices squashed in our democratic process. And a presidential election is just around the corner.

But there’s something we can do to ensure states don’t further deny citizens our most enshrined constitutional right. When the Court eviscerated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby decision, it declared that Congress could revive the law by writing a new formula for determining which states and localities must forward proposed voting changes to the federal government for “preclearance.” The 5–4 majority held that the old formula was outdated, ignoring thousands of pages of evidence congressional investigators compiled to demonstrate that voting discrimination was still alive at the polls. Nonetheless, a new and modern formula — one taking into account today’s discriminatory patterns — could give the country back the protections it lost.

Two bills have been introduced to right what the court got wrong. But nothing has happened — no hearing, no fanfare, no vote that would return protections for our most cherished American right and responsibility. What a difference from just a decade ago. In 2006, a Republican president and a divided Congress put partisanship aside to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, just as presidents and Congresses had done three times before. They understood that the law represented not Democratic or Republican values but American ones.

We can get there again; we can restore protections for all eligible voters. For nearly 50 years, the VRA worked. It stopped thousands of practices that would have kept Americans of color and immigrant citizens from having their voices heard in a political process that is supposed to include everyone. Lower courts already have addressed some of the problems unleashed by Shelby, but legislation that comports with the Supreme Court’s dictates can protect citizens from having to go to court in the first place. For legislators to do the right thing, they have to be reminded. We must remind them.

So this coming Monday, remind your representatives in Washington that they work for you — the people — and that voting must be free, fair, and accessible in this country. Urge them to hold a hearing on the Voting Rights Advancement Act. We did the right thing over 50 years ago; it’s time to renew that effort now.